14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Forums are nice, background checks are nice. I go by track record. What do the candidates stand for? What have the done? Where have they spent their time. In this election we've got a lot of opinions and trivia with only a few running on their record.

Elections shouldn't be a leap of faith. Sadly, that's what we see in Kansas City and I hope we look at these forms as mostly useless for anybody except as a promotional tool for those who put them together.

The star used this company too and I'm not sure if I 100% agree with their tactics. I think this list needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I really like the comment @11:51, we need to judge the candidates on their track record. Some of them have a proven list of accomplishments while others have very light resumes but talk a good time. KC can't do on the job training any more. We need people who are competent and ready to go from day one.

Just a few observations concerning The Star's flawed background check system:

First of all it is foolish and wasteful – an affectation of the corporate office that is totally unnecessary – given that both a criminal and civil history are easy to run using the local police department and the local civil records site.

The site that The Star initially refers everyone to is run by a disgruntled office seeker out of Seattle – and who does not in any way involve himself in the actual background research, which he refers to a separate "employment research" group. A Google check of that research group shows dozens of nightmare complaints against them with the Better Business Bureau. Any involvement with them soon shows why those complaints accumulate. Frankly, rather than an organization that The Star would employ, seems more like an organization that The Star traditionally would be doing an exposé on.

In one instance, it was impossible for the "top-notch investigators" to verify that Katheryn Shields is currently a member of the City Council – something that can be done by going to the City website or by calling the City human resources office on the number with which they were provided. Instead, Shields was called from somewhere in South Asia and asked to provide check stubs for the previous four years for their examination. Quintin Lucas' employment with the University of Kansas also could not be verified by them – unless of course they had bothered to look it up online. DUH!

Here's the deal: Democracy does not provide any Royal Road around a citizen doing his or her homework and looking at the IDEAS that each candidate presents. A newspaper does the public good when it helps present those ideas to the public.